On Wednesday, December 7, Ghanaians will go to the polls to vote in the country’s sixth presidential and parliamentary elections since the return to multiparty politics in 1992.

As the polls approach, the countryside is covered with the usual election paraphernalia: From the billboards and posters encouraging citizens to vote for candidate A or B to the pick-up trucks bedecked with loud speakers and party colours.

However, what I have been struck by are the pervasive peace campaigns. The common message is: Ghanaians have only one country, and should vote and accept the results in peace.

To this end, the country’s National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) has run an extensive campaign, which has included posters and billboards, but also peace marches, prayer rallies and radio programmes.

In addition, the Commission has used cinema vans to show documentaries of election-related violence in countries such as Cote d’Ivoire and Kenya to citizens across the country. The NCCE’s efforts have been reinforced by a wide range of actors including religious leaders, civil society organisations, media organisations, private businesses and politicians.

Such a common insistence on the need for peace is somewhat surprising given that the country’s elections have historically been largely peaceful. For example, according to a nationally representative survey — which I conducted as part of a research project with Nic Cheeseman of the University of Oxford and Justin Willis of the University in Durham in September 2015, only seven per cent of Ghanaians reported having received threats of violence in the last election in 2012.

In addition, the fact that power has twice changed hands through the ballot box — in 2000 and 2008 — has earned the country the accolade of being a democratic success story for the continent.

Difficult election

So why such a pervasive emphasis on the need for citizens to be peaceful?

At one level, these campaigns are driven by a sense that 2016 is likely to be a particularly tense and difficult election.

The pattern to date has been for presidents to rule for two terms, and for their successor to then be defeated. Thus, Jerry Rawlings and the NDC won in 1992 and 1996; John Atta Mills of the NDC was then beaten by John Kufour and the NPP in 2000 and 2004; and Kufour’s successor, Nana Akufo Addo, lost to Mills in 2008. As a result, many opposition supporters insist that the time has come for power to be handed back to the NPP.

However, while the NDC has been in power for two terms, the sitting president has only been in office for one. The reason is that President Mills died in office in 2012; his vice president, John Mahama, then going on to win a slim first-round victory in elections later that year with just 0.7 per cent of the vote. This raises the question of whether the opposition can unseat a sitting president, or whether the benefits of incumbency will once again prevail.

This situation is complicated by the fact that, while public confidence in the country’s Electoral Commission has gradually increased over the years, it has recently witnessed a significant dip.

This is due to NPP claims that the 2012 election was stolen from them, and from a widespread sense in opposition strongholds that the new EC chairman is “in bed with the NDC.”

The question is thus: If the NDC wins this week, will the NPP and their supporters accept the result?

This is pertinent given that the election looks set to be extremely close — with the NPP’s Akufo Addo ahead in some of the polls, and President Mahama ahead in others.

The danger of complacency

All of these factors lead to a tense environment. However, this cannot fully explain the pervasiveness of peace messaging. The reason is that, while peace campaigns seem to be particularly intense this time around, such messages are far from new and have long characterised the country’s elections.

At the same time, most Ghanaians still seem to believe, or at least hope, that the elections will be peaceful. Citizens are also well aware of the fact that any clashes are likely to pit NDC and NPP party supporters against each other, rather than members of a particular ethnic or religious group or region.

Instead, peace messaging seems to be informed, less by a sense that violence is likely and more by a belief that it is dangerous to be complacent.

This popular desire to guard against the possibility of the violence that has bedevilled other countries, is then taken up by the country’s political elite, as candidates of all parties encourage their supporters to be vigilant, but to also vote and accept the result in peace.

Indeed, such is the accepted importance of peace, that all politicians seek to emphasise their commitment to it as a way to present themselves as patriotic leaders who can help build and develop the country.

This emphasis on peace has birthed an industry that has attracted significant donor funding, since bilateral and multilateral organisations share popular fears of violence, and see peace campaigns as a discreet and fairly non-controversial activity that they can support. This is reflected in the fact that the NCCE’s ongoing peace campaign is largely funded by the European Union.

“Tyranny of peace messaging”

In some ways, this messaging reminds me of Kenya’s election in 2013. In the run-up to that election, the country’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission worked with local administrators, organisations and networks to monitor hate speech. Theatre groups, musicians, and public advertising all called upon Kenyans to vote in peace, and politicians competed to display their peace-loving credentials.

However, there is an important difference. While opposition candidates and many civil society activists complained of a “tyranny of peace messaging” in Kenya in 2013, I am yet to hear of the same sorts of complaints in Ghana.

The key difference is that, in Kenya, peace messaging went hand-in-hand with efforts to suppress frank discussion of issues that might cause tension and the visible placement of security in strategic areas.

In contrast, Ghanaians are still free to criticise each other and the government. Instead, peace messaging — while it plays into the hands of the political establishment by helping to delegitimise protest — has become a part of both political and popular campaigns.

The country — as interviewee after interviewee has reminded me — is surrounded by French-speaking countries and the sea, and most Ghanaians do not speak French. They will therefore have nowhere to run if there is any violence, and they want to maintain their reputation as a peaceful country.

Gabrielle Lynch is associate professor of comparative politics at the University of Warwick in the UK E-mail: [email protected]; Twitter:@GabrielleLynch6